I think the author of that paper is leaning more on the 'phenomenological consciousness isn't true' case than the 'united states is conscious' case.
I land in the max tegmark 'information probably is the same as consciousness' camp. It makes sense that a guy who studies simultaneity would ascribe magical properties to information that is partitioned like spacetime.
But I can't argue with the critics -- we don't yet have a measurable physical quantity for consciousness, much less a definition. Dave Chalmers says the 'hard problem' is why we have qualia. I think the hard problem is even more fundamental -- it's really hard to formulate questions about consciousness in a way that communciates the problem to someone who hasn't already thought of it.
You can say the behavioral evidence (i.e. measurable quantity) for consciousness is that we're having a conversation about it, but that feels like a copout.
I land in the max tegmark 'information probably is the same as consciousness' camp. It makes sense that a guy who studies simultaneity would ascribe magical properties to information that is partitioned like spacetime.
But I can't argue with the critics -- we don't yet have a measurable physical quantity for consciousness, much less a definition. Dave Chalmers says the 'hard problem' is why we have qualia. I think the hard problem is even more fundamental -- it's really hard to formulate questions about consciousness in a way that communciates the problem to someone who hasn't already thought of it.
You can say the behavioral evidence (i.e. measurable quantity) for consciousness is that we're having a conversation about it, but that feels like a copout.